Whoopi Goldberg has defended Malia Obama\u2019s decision to ditch her famous last name for her creative projects.Last month, the eldest daughter of former US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama premiered her debut short film, The Heart, at the Sundance Film Festival.<\/p>\n
The 18-minute short starring Tunde Adebimpe and Latonya Borsay, is written and directed by the 25-year-old. However, instead of being credited as Malia Obama, she chose to go by her first and middle names: Malia Ann.<\/p>\n
Her decision has been picked apart by critics who see the switch as an attempt at trying to shield herself from any \u201cnepo baby\u201d stigma.<\/p>\n
Addressing the naysayers on the latest episode of The View, Whoopi argued: \u201cShe knows she\u2019s an Obama, why do you care?\u201cWhy do you care what she calls herself? If she wanted to call herself Jeanette McDonald, she has the right to! If I can be Whoopi Goldberg, she can be whoever the hell she wants to be!\u201d<\/p>\n
Goldberg\u2019s real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson. However, in the early years of her career, the comedian renamed herself professionally after a whoopee cushion, she revealed in a 1997 PlayBill interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, why are people triggered by this kind of stuff? Why are people wasting their time?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
While Goldberg\u2019s co-host Joy Behar mostly agreed, she added: \u201cIt\u2019s not like her last name is Nixon. Her last name has great vibes around it. So she might as well use it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin considered Behar\u2019s comment before saying: \u201cDamned if you do, damned if you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf she went as Malia Obama, they\u2019d be like \u2018She\u2019s riding her parents\u2019 coattails.\u2019 And I can\u2019t think of a bigger shadow to feel like you\u2019re living in than the president and first lady of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Heart is about a grieving man who receives an unusual request from his mother in her will. It is also \u201cabout lost objects and lonely people and forgiveness and regret\u201d, Malia teased in a \u201cMeet the Artist\u201d video from the festival. \u201cBut I also think it works hard to uncover where tenderness and closeness can exist in these things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before making her directorial debut, Malia worked as a writer on Donald Glover\u2019s Prime Video series Swarm. She has also worked as an intern on the HBO series Girls, as well as a production assistant on the TV series Extant, starring Halle Berry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Whoopi Goldberg has defended Malia Obama\u2019s decision to ditch her famous last name for her…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"views":43,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}